Note: do not restore the full backup to your iPhone, as you risk losing all the data created after the moment that iCloud backup was made. This means you could lose photos, texts, notes and other data that wasn’t on your iPhone at the moment the backup was saved.

As long as you have available an iCloud backup made prior to the moment you lost your contacts, retrieving your contacts from an iCloud backup with the help of iPhone Backup Extractor is really simple. Here are the steps you need to take:

How to retrieve deleted or lost iPhone contacts and restore them back on your iPhone

We recommend you activate the Premium license to unlock all limitations and enjoy full access to your iCloud backup data. Please note that the Lite and Basic licenses will only let you see your available iCloud backup, its size and date, but not the actual data.

Note that Apple usually does iCloud backups of your iDevice data if connected over Wi-Fi, to the Internet, plugged into a power source or locked. Therefore, in order to avoid any data clashes, make sure none of these cases apply to your iPhone while retrieving your contacts.

Click on the left pane "Devices" list and select the iCloud backup corresponding to the device you want to retrieve data from. You will then be given 3 tab options of exploring your iCloud data: Categories, Individual Files and Full Backup.

If you wish to extract only "Contacts" then we recommend you use "Categories" and click "Download".

3. Extract contacts to your PC

Once your iCloud backup is loaded, go to the "Overview" pane and click on the blue link next to "Contacts".

Select the location where you want to export your contacts and boom! The iPhone Backup Extractor will save you contacts in both CSV (file called Contacts.csv) and VCF formats (individual VCards for every contact and the complete Contacts.vcf file).

4. Restore contacts to iPhone

Once you have the Contacts.VCF file on your computer, you can email it to yourself. On your iPhone, open the email and tap on the attachment. Click on "Add Contacts" button. You will be asked if you’d like to create new contacts or merge them with what you already have in your list. Once imported, you should now have all your contacts back on your iPhone.

If you hit any bumps in the road or have any questions just let us know, our support team is eager to help you.